School lessons, social media and political events in a get-out-the-vote campaign: successful drivers of political engagement among youth?

Abstract

During election times, societal actors frequently employ specific getout-the-vote campaigns to mobilize young voters' turnout and engagement with the election. Although such campaigns receive praise in society, little is known about how effective they are and if they shape longer lasting types of political engagement. This study presents novel evidence about the differential effects of a multi-platform get-out-the-vote campaign in Denmark, and investigates how such campaigns can help to address the important democratic problem of youth disengagement. Based on a two-wave panel study among high school-and university students in Denmark (n = 275), the effects of classroom interventions, political event participation, and social media use on political interest, knowledge, and political efficacy are explored. The results suggests that get-out-the-vote campaigns are able to strengthen youths' political engagement, but that civic education and political events may be more important than communication via social media. ARTICLE HISTORY

Following Politicians on Social Media: Effects for Political Information, Peer Communication, and Youth Engagement

“…Finally, future work should distinguish between different social media platforms in order to understand whether the interdependence of individual choices and algorithmic curation varies, and how far the relationships investigated here may be more (or less) pronounced depending on specific platforms in line with their affordances (e.g., Kalsnes, Larsson, & Enli, 2017;Ohme et al, 2019).…”

“…The drop-out rate between W1 and Wave 2 (W2) was therefore quite high. Comparisons of sample descriptives from both waves show similar distributions with regard to age (W1: M = 18.88; W2: M = 18.64), gender (W1: 50.2% female; W2: 48.6% female), origin (born in Denmark W1: 94.4%; W2: 95.3%), and political interest (W1: M = 6.57; W2: M = 7.06; range 1 = not at all interested, to 7 = very interested; see also Ohme et al, 2019). We rely on respondents from the second wave only, since it includes the relevant measures of campaign exposure, participation, and civic messaging, and exclude respondents who were above 25 years old; this results in our final sample size of n = 567.…”

“…The data for this survey were collected in the fall of 2017 as part of a two-wave panel study fielded shortly before and after the Danish municipality elections (see also Ohme, Marquart, & Kristensen, 2019). The data were collected on the Danish island Funen; the participants were 567 young Danish citizens (51% male).…”

Digital verbunden Formen politischer Partizipation von Jugendlichen in Niederösterreich

“…Dennoch bringt dieser Trend auch Herausforderungen für repräsentative Demokratien, insbesondere in Gesellschaften, in denen die Älteren zahlenmäßig die jüngere Generation überholen. Wenn sich nur wenige der jungen Wähler*innen oder Bürger*innen an formalen politischen Prozessen beteiligen, so ist die Chance groß, dass sie überstimmt werden bei Fragen, die eigentlich ihre Zukunft bestimmen (Ohme et al 2020), wie dies z. B. beim Brexit-Referendum in Großbritannien der Fall war.…”

Sharing economy on election campaign through social media

“…Several research results that are relevant to this article, and will be used as a reference in the discussion, including research by Ohme et al (2020), which discusses the existence of civil society in the election campaign, establishes a special campaign method by mobilizing to demonstrate voter participation through social media communication. The results of research by Yarchi & Samuel-Azran (2018), show that female politicians use social media more in campaigns, and think that social media can be a space for promotion to increase their existence.…”